| Here I must mention
Prof. Albert Egges Van Giffen again. As a leading archaeologist at the State
University of Groningen, he spent his entire career studying the hunebeds.
He is called the father of the hunebeds. In 1917 he got the assignment
for a comprehensive survey of all archaeological monuments in Holland.
He found 54 hunebeds, 53 in the province of Drenthe and 1 in Groningen.
Most of them in a terrible state. Incomplete, ruined and dilapidated.
Only a few were 'in excellent condition'. He also found the original sites
of 34 hunebeds that have disappeared completely in the course of time.
Not only in Drenthe but also a few in Friesland and Overijssel.
During the next 20 years many hunebeds have been restored under his supervision. D49 is the most outstanding example of his accomplishment. At the time of the survey he described this hunebed as being in a 'pitiful condition'. Only 2 of the 6 capstones were left and had tumbled down into the chamber. 2 sidestones, 5 passagestones and almost all 28 kerbstones were missing. Van Giffen searched for replacing stones throughout Drenthe and found most of them in D33, a ruin that was pulled down for this sake. In this way he reconstructed D49, perhaps not in its original state, but as a truthful example of a hunebed as it was 5000 years ago. For didactic reasons the original barrow that covered the hunebed, was restored for the half of it. In his honor a big boulder with his portrait in bronze attached, has been placed near D49. |
| Now I am going to deceive you a little bit. I manipulated the original picture, but for a good reason: I finished Van Giffen's reconstruction by digital picture enhancing. But now you can see what a medium-sized hunebed really looked like just after its completion 5000 years ago! |
 D46
and D47 |
D50
 |
